Crunch (imposing long periods of major overtime to meet a deadline) has been a major spectre in the games' industry since its inception, though particularly in the past few years, with developers at several studios including Rockstar, CD Projekt, Telltale and more reporting absurd expectations from their higher-ups.
That's not to say short periods of crunch are inherently a sign that something's gone wrong—racing to beat a deadline is common in a lot of creative industries, and sometimes it's self-imposed out of passion for the project. It is, however, a thing to be avoided—and several of those aforementioned studios have sworn off relying on crunch to solve their problems.
